1. Introduction
Short-form video platforms, represented by the salience of Douyin (TikTok outside of China), have emerged as ubiquitous social media in recent years, reshaping the practices of record companies and music streaming services, and giving rise to a new cross-audiovisual platform ecosystem. In this article, I adopt the concept of the ‘platform adaptor’ (Zhang and Negus Reference Zhang and Negus2024) to analyse how music industry practitioners and content producers have adjusted their production, distribution, and promotion strategies in response to this emerging industrial ecosystem.
The concept of ‘platform adaptor’ combines two meanings of the term adaptor. First, the term ‘adaptor’ refers to how people in organisations respond to changing social, economic, and technological environments. In the study of management and organisations, the concept of an adaptor has often been contrasted with the role of an ‘innovator’, following Michael Kirton’s (Reference Kirton1980) distinction between adaptation and innovation. However, the assumption that adaptation and innovation are mutually exclusive is misleading in terms of the history of popular music. Many artistic, cultural, and commercial innovations have come from music industry personnel adapting to new circumstances, whether the social and technological changes that afforded the emergence of hip-hop in the United States, or the social, economic, and institutional changes facilitated by the market reforms in China from 1978 that led Cui Jian to innovative adaptations of international pop forms, rock, and jazz with traditional Chinese folk sonorities. Hence, in referring to platform adaptors, I do not mean to suggest that this precludes innovations.
The second sense of the term ‘adaptor’ is drawn from the studies of the practices of adaptation ‘from one work of art to the next’ (Hassler-Forest and Nicklas Reference Hassler-Forest and Nicklas2015) and connects with discussions of ‘transmedia texts’ (Eder Reference Eder, Hassler-Forest and Nicklas2015), as the sounds, words, and images of musicians and creative artists are understood across multiple texts (such as fan fictions, photos and collages, sonic mashups, blogs, and merchandise), platforms, and social media. Hence, staff adapt songs and tracks so that they are optimised for short-form video platforms.
I locate the adaptive practices of musicians and platform personnel within the conceptual frame of the ‘affordances of platforms’ (Bucher and Helmond Reference Bucher, Helmond, Burgess, Poell and Marwick2017), and the distinct cultural ecology of Chinese audiovisual platforms and streaming services, specifically NetEase Cloud, Tencent Music Entertainment Group (incorporating QQ Music, KuGou, Kuwo), and Douyin. I then discuss the practices of adaptation engaged in by staff who work with musicians to construct ‘hot songs’ (热歌), as this occurs within the commenting ecology of platforms, and the requirements of short-form video apps.
The term ‘hot songs’ is drawn from vernacular use in the Chinese music industry and refers to a category of songs that are produced specifically to gain attention on short-form video apps. In bringing together theoretical ideas about affordance, ecologies, and adaptation, this article contributes to research on how cultural forms are ‘optimised’ (Morris Reference Morris2020), illustrating how the idea of platform adaptors can extend the concept of optimisation by emphasising how content is adapted to the requirements of platforms. As song production practices adapt to the requirements of short-form videos that can spread across different platforms in gaining popularity, I argue that the emotional coding of songs has become more important for the commodification of popular music in the Chinese platform economy.
In developing these arguments, this article also aims to connect the generalisations and theories proposed from studies in Europe and the United States with the particularities of Chinese media ecologies, implicitly within the wider context of East Asian systems of transnational media production (Mōri Reference Mōri2011; Zhang and Negus Reference Zhang and Negus2020). Although considerable research and writing has addressed the impact of digital platforms on musicians, music industries, and listeners, most of this has focused on the United States and Western Europe, with much attention paid to Spotify. This article builds upon this scholarship, but it importantly adds to research on the relatively under-studied Chinese music industry since digitalisation (Chen Reference Chen2021; Li Reference Li2014; Qu Reference Qu2023; Shen et al. Reference Shen, Zheng, Liu, Williams, Li and Gerst2019). Hence, I contribute to and directly build upon studies and theories of how music industry practices are shaped by platforms in North America and Europe (Prey Reference Prey and Stark2020), whilst also establishing bridges to Asian perspectives (Tintiangko et al. Reference Tintiangko, Fung and Leo-Liu2023) that might challenge ‘the dominant mode of platform studies that presume a global geography for U.S.-based examples’ (Steinberg and Li Reference Steinberg and Li2017, p. 173).
My research draws from thirty-two in-person and online interviews with producers, musicians, songwriters, and staff working for or who had previously worked for Chinese platforms, music industry companies, and organisations, carried out between 2020 and 2024. In conducting interviews, I drew from the method of qualitative, conversational interviewing (Athens Reference Athens2010; Roulston and Choi Reference Roulston, Choi and Flicke2017), as part of an interpretative approach to cultural research. I treated interviewees’ responses not as raw data but as partial, situated knowledge (Haraway Reference Haraway1998), which is recalled and reconstructed in the specific context of an interview encounter (Clifford Reference Clifford1988). This approach involves negotiating a ‘double hermeneutic’ (Giddens Reference Giddens1993; Negus Reference Negus1999) whereby the interviewee’s everyday theoretical understandings intersect with the formal concepts and theories of scholars, incorporating James Clifford’s (Reference Clifford1988) anthropological practice of an ‘open-ended, creative dialogue’ with ‘native informants’ (p. 46). I then contextualised and assessed interviewee responses alongside other sources and my accumulated knowledge of the Chinese music and media industry (Zhang Reference Zhang2024) when selecting the most insightful and appropriate quotations for this article. All participants consented and were aware that their comments were for an academic study. Due to respect for non-disclosure agreements and codes of confidentiality, interviewees have been cited anonymously when requested. All quotations are translated from Chinese by the author.
2. The affordances of digital platform ecologies: A theoretical context for musical adaptations and optimisation
The concept of affordance provides a theoretical frame for understanding how the practices of musicians are adapted in relation to digital platforms. Although triggering debates across the arts, humanities, and scientific disciplines (Bucher and Helmond Reference Bucher, Helmond, Burgess, Poell and Marwick2017), I follow those scholars who stress how the concept of affordance can be applied to study how digital platforms and social media lead to new types of user activities, commercial relationships, fan–band interactions, and creative practices across media (Baym Reference Baym2018; Bhatia et al. Reference Bhatia, Pathak-Shelat, Sinha and Mishra2024; Jones Reference Jones2020; Lin and de Kloet Reference Lin and de Kloet2023).
Bucher and Helmond (Reference Bucher, Helmond, Burgess, Poell and Marwick2017) identify four interrelated dynamics that are relevant to this article, these being the relational, perceptual, social, and technological. First, affordance allows an understanding of the relational properties of platforms, the intermediations connecting texts and sounds to their cultural contexts and institutional ecologies. Second, affordances must be perceived to be realised. Hence, the perception of the affordances of platforms informs the practices of strategists, content operators, musicians, and listeners in their use of platforms. Third, platforms offer specific technological affordances, a point informing Jeremy Morris’s (Reference Morris2020) concept of optimisation as it draws upon Mark Katz’s (Reference Katz2004) research into how musicians responded to early recording technologies by reconfiguring sonorities, practices, and the aesthetic values of musicians. Fourth, these relational, perceptual, and technological affordances are embedded within circumstances informed by cultural conventions, commercial structures, and systems of governance and regulation (de Kloet et al. Reference De Kloet, Poell, Guohua and Chow2019).
In outlining these affordances, Bucher and Helmond (Reference Bucher, Helmond, Burgess, Poell and Marwick2017) argue that platforms ‘constitute environments’, with distinct differences despite similar features and functions (Burgess Reference Burgess, Cunningham and Craig2021; Poell et al. Reference Poell, Nieborg and Duffy2021). The concept allows for thinking about how Chinese digital platforms afford specific platform ecosystems within which musicians and industry practitioners actively adapt their creative and commercial activities. Hence, this article seeks to connect to the scholarship on platform affordances by opening a discussion about the ecologies of different Chinese platforms, with particular attention to the streaming platforms of NetEase Cloud Music and streaming platforms of Tencent Music Entertainment (hereafter TME).
The ecology and ecosystem metaphors have been used by practitioners in the Chinese music industry and scholars emphasising the interrelationships, influences, and interdependencies of different agents, organisations, and technologies (Chen Reference Chen2021; Qu Reference Qu2023; Tang Reference Tang2024). Adopted here with an awareness of its limitations, the idea of platform ecologies provides a heuristic frame for understanding how the creative practices of musicians are adapted across platforms. As Maroš Krivý (Reference Krivý2023) has cautioned, when derived from its use in computer science and business management, the ecology metaphor can naturalise social processes as self-regulating and evade the material conflicts of capital, markets, and state regulation. However, Attila Márton (Reference Márton2022) has challenged the claim that the ecosystem approach inevitably naturalises social processes, arguing that the use of the concept moves beyond the metaphorical and allows for an analysis of digitalisation across the boundaries of ‘organisations, industries, lifeworlds, mind, and body’ (p. 250). The concepts of media ecologies and platform ecosystems allow for understanding how phenomena are always part of relationships, dynamics, and processes within a wider ecosystem that is not reducible to single forces (Márton Reference Márton2022), as they permit different levels of analyses (Tang Reference Tang2024), and connect scholarship with the vernacular of Chinese music and media industries personnel.
3. The relational influence of short-form video within the Chinese music industry ecosystem
Compared with music industries in North America, Western Europe, and Japan, the music industry in China developed later due to the disruption caused by the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) and only grew as a modern commercial business during the 1980s within the socialist market following reforms introduced under Deng Xiaoping (Zhang Reference Zhang2024). The country then went through a rapid period of ‘compressed’ development and experienced the adoption of smartphones, social media, and a fully digital recorded music economy earlier than in other parts of the world, similar to South Korea after the period of military rule (Choi Reference Choi2007; Jin Reference Jin2017). Whereas platforms in Europe and North America initially concentrated on discrete services before later diversifying to follow Chinese social media systems (Raedts Reference Raedts2021), in East Asia (particularly South Korea and China) platform ‘ecosystems’ were from the outset integrated into linked content (karaoke, fiction, film, and games), along with messaging apps, multiple business services, transport and delivery, online payment systems, and government data collection, all of which informed the ecologies and economies of fan experience and engagement (Lee Reference Lee2009; Tse Reference Tse2015; Zhang and Negus Reference Zhang and Negus2021).
Within this wider context, the platforms Douyin, Kuaishou, WeChat Channels, Xiaohongshu, and Toutiao became the prevailing source of music-related media for Chinese online audiences. In June 2024, QuestMobile (2024) reported that the combined monthly users of short-video platforms reached 989 million people, with an average monthly user time of 61 hours per individual. Music is accessed via these media as it is seamlessly integrated with a wide range of content categories, such as beauty, drama, movie clips, pet videos, dance, and changing clothes. Although the music of short-form videos is often referred to as background music (BGM), implying its functional subordination and service nature, this perspective overlooks the crucial role that sounds (especially popular music hooks) play in attracting and retaining users, and the way music interacts with and mediates still and moving images.
Through short-form videos, music has permeated the daily lives of audiences. Tracked and targeted by the deployment of algorithms, the habitual use of these apps has afforded the rapid spread of what industry insiders call ‘hot songs’. The success of these songs, because of their prominence in short-form videos, then sets an agenda within the music industry. Evidence can be found in the China Music Marketing Development Research Report (Little Deer Horn Think Tank 2021), indicating that the largest portion of new song promotion budgets was being allocated to short-form video influencers, and short-form video platforms were considered the most effective media channel for promoting songs, with music streaming platforms ranking second. The increasing involvement of short-form videos has altered the strategic investment decisions made by senior managers while reshaping production methods and promotion channels. Musicians and industry practitioners have had to adapt to a new industrial digital platform ecology where short-form videos have become the ubiquitous media.
Faced with the media ecology dominated by platforms like Douyin, more companies have been formed to specialise in producing potential hot songs for these platforms. However, new companies must compete with the existing large corporations, notably TME and NetEase Cloud Music. TME was established in 2017 by bringing together three streaming apps (QQ Music, KuGuo, and Kuwo) and buying a controlling stake in the China Music Group. The parent Tencent Corporation, founded in 1998, generated its initial revenue from games and search engines, before quickly diversifying into data services and storage, equity investments, computing technologies, and e-commerce. NetEase Cloud Music is part of the NetEase Corporation, formed in 1997, and initially grew from online gaming, social media, and email services, before diversifying.
Although the music streaming platforms of these corporations might seem similar, like many technology and entertainment conglomerates, the staff I interviewed (who worked or had worked for both companies) spoke of contrasting ecologies linking the company to users, working practices, and relationships with musicians. Tencent’s music division was perceived as historically less important to the overall corporation, more concerned with revenue from superstars like Jay Chou (signed for a short period) and focused more on larger-scale pan-entertainment asset acquisition and financial investment strategies. NetEase was perceived to be more focused on independent musicians, ‘smaller’ and ‘more human’, and to have retained an ethos of being a ‘pioneer’. Regardless of the accuracy of such observations, these perceptions constitute affordances (Bucher and Helmond Reference Bucher, Helmond, Burgess, Poell and Marwick2017) that influence the beliefs of music and tech industry personnel and relationally inform musicians seeking an outlet for their work. These contrasts are also indicative of corporate rivalry that has led to legal disputes, such as when NetEase sued TME for unfair competitive practices and copyright violations (Liu and Barrionuevo Reference Liu and Barrionuevo2022). This rivalry is also an indication of how all platforms occupy a location within the broader landscape of the Chinese music industry ecology.
Under these conditions, TME has sought to leverage its strengths in strategic investment and copyright control, reorienting towards companies focused on producing hot songs for short-form videos by acquiring firms. Since the establishment of TME, it has directly or indirectly controlled more than 253 music companies of varying sizes through holding, equity participation, and varying contractual arrangements (Bayin Music Copyright 2024a). Information from industry insiders suggested that TME had an interest in forty-six hot song production companies that accounted for around 20% of hot songs streamed on the company’s music apps whilst also being targeted at Douyin short videos (Bayin Music Copyright 2024b). Among the most representative are Hikoon (海葵), Qigu (齐鼓), and Kuojing (阔景). Beijing Hikoon Technology Co., for example, was founded in 2015 and has since established collaborations with over 500 internet celebrities and singers, and sub-invested in four other music companies. These interlinked companies indicate how hot songs are crucial for TME’s copyright content strategy and market competitiveness.
Compared with TME, NetEase Cloud Music, the second-largest streaming music platform in China, has relatively less capital (Zhang Reference Zhang2024) and cannot acquire hot song production companies on the same scale. The company has therefore adopted two strategies: acquiring the copyrights of potential hot songs and allocating staff and budgets to produce potential hot songs.
The process for acquiring copyrights involves monitoring and identifying potential hot songs on various social media platforms (measured by streams, comments, traffic, and current trends), negotiating deals for signing the publishing and recording rights, and finally investing and promoting the songs to become even bigger hits across platforms. When streaming platforms redirect data from short-form video platforms back to their own systems and consolidate the data, it not only provides information to increase play rates but also allows data for retaining existing users and attracting new ones. This copyright acquisition work is carried out by at least fourteen internally competitive studios within NetEase Cloud Music (including Yunshang, Qingyun Lab, Dianbo, Shanwei, Xiyu, and Chaoliu), and these form the core of its organisational structure. The term ‘studio’ here translates more as ‘office’, ‘space’, or ‘production group’ (rather than artistic studio) and comprises a small team of collaborators who may draw on external expertise. This studio-based structure is a legacy of NetEase’s gaming industry operations. CEO Ding Lei had established numerous studios that contributed to the success of NetEase’s gaming business, and he later applied this content production model to NetEase Cloud Music. For example, the representative Yunshang Studio within NetEase has over twenty employees, all focused on copyright business roles. Their work involves copyright transactions with various rights holders ranging from individuals to companies, sourcing demos or completed tracks that allow the creation of original content that can be targeted at short-form video platforms like Douyin.
The term ‘copyright business’(版权商务) within these studios is somewhat ambiguous and fluid. These employees may shift roles to become planners, promoters, and producers when they are involved in creating original content whilst also maintaining a role as purchasers of copyrights. A former employee of NetEase Cloud Music, Will, described the work of these studio employees:
These content studio employees are like little ants in the entire industry ecosystem. They maintain close interactions with platform music, forming a sticky relationship. If one ant can manage 100 musicians, then 200 ants can manage 2000 musicians. Although there is internal competition within NetEase that can drive up the price of single tracks, it at least ensures that these potential hot songs are not signed by other companies. From an investment perspective, the studio approach is more cost-effective than producing content in-house, as there is no guarantee that self-produced content will recoup costs. Driven by this need, NetEase’s performance evaluation criteria have also changed, focusing more on whether employees can activate their networks and form collaborations with external content producers to quickly acquire songs and uncover quality content sources. (Personal interview, 20 September 2024)
Will used the metaphor of ants to refer to colleagues he once worked with and a studio he was part of. Although the metaphor of ants has been used differently in various times and places, it is commonly adopted across cultures and languages to signal hard work, diligence, cooperation, coping with complexity, and attention to minutiae. This metaphor evokes a sense of how the studio system is organised. The dynamics are pursued below through the concept of adaptation.
4. Adapting songs for short-form videos: Rapid responses to social media trends
Responding to commercial pressures of short-form videos, music streaming companies have adjusted their human resources to adapt to the new media ecology, influencing all domestic labels such as Taihe Music Group. The three major international record companies, Sony, Warner, and Universal, have all adapted their Chinese operations and compete to acquire hot songs. However, the three majors still rely on the old A&R (Artists and Repertoire) systems and tend not to directly produce hot songs, but instead take advantage of copyright and production deals, and joint ventures. For example, the songs ‘Star Ocean’ (星辰大海), ‘Big Wind Blows’ (大风吹), and ‘Parting Blossoms’ (离别开出花) were all co-released by Beijing Haoyue Wuhuang Culture Co. (北京好乐无荒文化有限公司) and Sony Music. The majors also use their extensive catalogues of copyrighted songs to attract cover song singers targeted at Douyin. For instance, cover artist En collaborated with Sony to produce the Douyin hot song ‘Compromise’ (妥协) originally performed by Jolin Tsai, and with Warner on ‘Name and Surname’ (连名带姓), originally recorded by Jay Chou.
From music content production to distribution to promotion, all aspects have been affected by this changing ecology. If, in the era of records, music production was typically balanced between market demand and musicians’ creations through A&R, then in the era of audiovisual platforms, content is produced and promoted according to the affordances and commercial imperatives of short-form videos. This is a significant reason why I emphasise the term ‘adaptor’ in this article.
Content producers, distributors, and promoters must constantly consider how to align with and adapt to short-form video platforms. While acknowledging the influential role of short-form videos, it is important not to overlook the unique micro-ecosystems of each platform. For instance, NetEase Cloud Music has a distinct ‘comment ecosystem’ – as it is known within the company and among users – where tens of thousands of users share their stories and experiences associated with a song whilst also liking other posted stories, thereby resonating with the perceptions of other users of the platform. Following the success and influence of this practice, other streaming platforms within the TME group, notably QQ Music, began replicating the comment ecosystem, encouraging users to share their personal stories to generate resonances and resources. The micro-ecologies of different platforms present a challenge for the creators of potential hot songs as they must gain attention across different platforms. Only those songs that can span various platforms ultimately become successful hot songs.
Whether streaming platforms, the Chinese operations of international major record companies, or domestic labels, all have come to adopt similar approaches: acquiring or collaborating in joint ventures for hot song copyrights, or producing potential hot songs in-house. As a former employee of Taihe Music Group remarked: ‘Now, almost everyone in the industry is doing the same thing, which is buying hot songs everywhere’ (Personal interview, 24 July 2024). Thus, a new industrial ecosystem has emerged where the distinction between streaming platforms and record companies becomes much more blurred than in the United States and Europe as they first become buyers of hot song copyrights, then act as agencies for the production and promotion of hot songs. At the same time, countless individuals and smaller companies become the content providers of these hot songs. These companies can quickly respond to social media and produce hot songs in a short period of time whilst also establishing singing or collaborative ventures with Douyin celebrities, using their access to MCN (Multi-Channel Networks) for song promotion. During the frantic competition to find and quickly secure the copyrights of hot songs, the roles of buyer, celebrity agency, and content provider are not clearly delineated and may be blurred as all tasks may be undertaken by one individual or divided among staff. An employee from NetEase Cloud Music’s Xiyu (喜雨) Studio recalled a recent experience:
At that time, it was the ’New Rap 2024’ show, and there was a contestant named Baokou Brother (暴扣哥), who was already quite popular. I remember this song was released on Douyin in video form on either the 13th or 14th of May. After fermenting for two or three days, it showed signs of becoming popular. The Douyin algorithm started recommending this video content, and with the precedent of the explosive popularity of the rapper’s battle ‘Nuomi dissing Xie Di’, we quickly contacted Baokou Brother himself. However, an agent called ’Hit Song Town Studio’ was one step ahead of us. They quoted us 70,000 yuan for the song, and they could have earned about half of that. Since any amount over 50,000 yuan required approval from our top management, we were still hesitating when the song had already been sold to a company in Chengdu. (Personal interview, 20 September 2024)
The above quote emphasises the extremely fast pace of hot song transactions and the imperative of rapid responses to music markets perceived through social media trends. Songs specifically produced for Douyin videos are often referred to by industry insiders as ‘Douyin magic songs’ (Douyin shenqu, 抖音神曲). Companies that specialise in producing these are known as magic song factories. In producing potential hot songs that can gain rapid popularity, these factories are also notable for significantly shortening the cycles of production, distribution, and promotion in relation to the previous recording industry’s long-term planning process.
‘Learn to Meow’ (学猫叫) was released in 2018, with the lyrics ‘Let’s learn to meow together, meow’, and is regarded within the industry as the first representative Douyin magic song. Producer Chen Feng claimed that he created the song in half an hour while holding his cat in his arms. Subsequently, the song’s company, Baina Entertainment (百纳娱乐), discovered that ‘Learn to Meow’ was very suitable for a particular style of ‘cute’ – cute gestures and dances – so they quickly collaborated with influencers known for their cute traits, created appropriate gesture dances, and pushed the song to short-form video platforms in the quickest possible time. Ultimately, this song became a massively popular Douyin magic song and won the Billboard Radio China Annual Top 10 Chinese Songs Award.
The company Yunmao Culture (云猫文化) is also a recognised Douyin magic songs manufacturer and its operations are similarly characterised by rapid response to trends and speed of production. Yunmao Culture was reported to use a ‘real-time entertainment hotspot detection system’ to constantly capture keywords for song production, claiming that this enabled them to produce a song that aligns with specific trends within 4 hours from songwriting to online release (Yu Le Zi Ben Lun 2019). For example, the CEO of Yunmao Culture, Song Mengjun, observed that many people were posting comments complaining about insomnia on Douyin, so he specifically created a song targeted at these people. ‘Insomnia Night’ (失眠的夜) was released on 16 June 2021 and by July 6 had registered 470 million plays on Douyin and featured in the charts on multiple platforms (Ciwei Gongshe 2021).
Composing songs in response to trends and rapidly releasing a track has become a key feature of the short-video ecosystem, significantly shortening the production and promotion cycles of works. At the same time, the frequency of releases has increased. The traditional model of spending weeks, months, or even years to produce an album, common in the recording industry in the past, is now very rare in the Chinese industry ecosystem. Rapid construction of individual songs in response to social media trends (judged as an indicator of the music market) has become more common.
According to an employee working at the Qingyun Lab Studio, when creating hot songs, the team has some general standards and methods that she explained in this way:
We usually hope that the song is not only suitable for covers and video accompaniments but can also be used for hot dances or as casual BGM, meaning it can easily adapt to various types of short videos. That means this segment should have a pulse, be rhythmic, and easily stimulate the audience’s happy nerves. But not every song has a seamless ’climactic segment,’ so sometimes we need to deconstruct and reassemble the entire song to allow the audience to feel a transition from a 3-second ‘quiet build up’ to a segment full of Douyin magic song style within just 20 seconds. (Personal interview, 23 February 2023)
Despite the widespread adoption of these practices, many staff within the industry are concerned about this development. The term ‘hot song’ is usually used in a relatively neutral and descriptive way. However, the term ‘magic song’ often carries derogatory connotations. Professionals on social media often criticise these songs as ‘mundane’, ‘repetitive’, ‘unoriginal’, and a type of ‘brainwashing’. One musician referred to the ‘poor aesthetic taste’ of magic songs and identified them as the ‘main culprit for the decline of Chinese pop music’. While I do not wish to use this article to make a judgement on the aesthetic merits of magic songs, it is important to recognise these tensions among staff and musicians within the industry. My main point concerns how these magic song practices have emerged due to the way that practitioners have adapted to the changing ecosystem of short-form videos.
5. Optimising hot songs within the emotional ecologies of social media
For industry practitioners, whether organising the production of a hot song or purchasing songs with hit potential that are gaining traffic on social media, a crucial working method is to closely monitor the dynamics through which emotions and moods are being expressed on social media. A key aspect of how song adaptations are optimised for short-form video platforms involves aligning the production and acquisition of songs with cyclically familiar public events and media rituals where user emotions are presented through keywords in comments, or personalised narratives, or spread virally in the form of memes. For example, in 2024, in the weeks preceding Father’s Day and its associated media rituals, employees at NetEase Cloud Music’s Yunshang Studio began to produce and promote songs on this theme. The company released a song titled ‘River’ (河) about paternal love sung by He Haonan and collaborated with Douyin to launch an accompanying ‘Singing together challenge’ (合唱挑战) involving video duets (combining original and cover versions). This promotional campaign gained the participation of thousands of users and the track recorded over 7 million views on Douyin. The song was also promoted to influencers on short-form video platforms to associate ‘River’ with the emotional expressions being articulated towards fathers during that specific period.
Wang Liuzhi, the CEO of a hot music company, explained his perspective on how public emotions on social media are related to time of year and seasons:
Making music is about summarizing human nature, and you have to make judgments based on social emotions. In January, people are striving hard and need some motivational songs; in February and March, with the arrival of spring, light and lively themes are in focus; in April and May, some people start job-hopping or preparing for graduation, so workplace inspirational songs are needed; in June and July, with graduation season approaching soon, many songs about unrequited love (暗恋) and sadness start to appear online, as students either fall in love or break up, facing a significant parting in life; in August and September, the theme is mainly about breakups, as many students make choices a couple of months after graduation, feeling ’very heartbroken’; in October, the theme is about loving the motherland; in November, it’s still about breakups, as the cold weather makes individuals without care feel the loneliest; in December, it’s about motivation, as people need to retain hope waiting for the arrival of spring. (Ciwei Gongshe 2021)
As this quote illustrates, the producers and promoters of hot songs continually aim to link songs to their perceptions of recurrent seasonal moods and emotional experiences. Monitoring emotions being expressed across social media is an essential working method for shaping the type of songs being acquired and produced at any one time. During my interviews with music industry practitioners, many discussed how hot song creators on streaming platforms use emotionally related buzzwords for searches, for example, emo or zha xin (扎心, heart-wrenching), chill (a behaviour or music that is relaxing and enjoyable), sang (丧, an internet popular term describing a state of passive, low spirits, and mental lethargy), and ran (燃, burning – often used in animation, comics, and games (ACG) culture to describe a state or phenomenon that provokes enthusiasm and excitement).
Industry practitioners are keen to engage with these emotional dynamics due to the way social media affords the sharing of emotional experiences and reactions to music and facilitates dialogues that allow these emotional themes to permeate different social media platforms and become cross-media narratives. In this way, the emotional narratives allow the most popular hot songs to become transmedia texts across all platforms (short-form videos, streaming media, Weibo, etc.). When music content, mediated by emotions and mood, has the potential to bridge various platforms and becomes a hot song across the entire platform ecosystem, it can achieve maximum copyright revenue.
‘Emo’ is highly representative of these cross-platform emotional categories. The term originated from a post-punk genre in the United States during the 1980s, characterised by a vulnerable sensitivity, and trembling or tearful emotional releases at climactic moments during performances (Greenwald Reference Greenwald2003). However, in Chinese social media, the meaning and context of this term evolved in a different and culturally specific way. ‘I’m emo’ became widely circulated as a meme on social media during 2021 and was used to express sudden, uncontrollable negative emotions such as low spirits, irritability, distress, anxiety, and sadness. In Chinese ‘e’ sounds like the character for depression (抑), and gradually ‘emo’ became synonymous with depression. However, unlike the pathological concept of depression, the type of depression evoked by ‘emo’ is more like a reinterpretation and reconstruction of depression by young people. It is usually perceived as a state of emotional low or instability. The critic Li (Reference Li2023) viewed it as directly articulating the negative emotions and anxiety caused by peer competition amongst the younger generation during this period.
The emotional dynamics of emo on social media were given momentum by staff at NetEase Cloud Music. In 2014, the year after the platform officially launched, NetEase Cloud Music’s product manager Wang Shimu designed a feature encouraging users to browse comments and share their own experiences or feelings, and dialogue with those of other people by posting likes and comments. This became a new way for many young people to express their feelings and was very soon a unique content ecosystem specific to NetEase yet connecting to other platforms. As a result of the constant posting and circulation of comments about breakups, unrequited love, workplace frustrations, and ex-boyfriends/girlfriends, many popular negative emotional comments under NetEase Cloud Music were connected to songs. Yet, these were less a direct expression of the content of songs and more a perception afforded by the activities of users.
The ‘depressed’ emotion in the popular comments on NetEase Cloud Music gradually became an aspect of the platform’s unique ecology, leading netizens to jokingly refer to it as ‘Wang Yiyun’ (网抑云), Net Depression Cloud, a homophone for ‘NetEase Cloud’ that sounds like ‘Net Depression Cloud’. This phenomenon intensified as the NetEase Cloud Music platform grew in popularity, and by 2020, the term ‘Wang Yiyun’ (Net Depression Cloud) would be selected as one of the ‘Top 10 Internet Hot Words’ of the year by Youth Digest.
Contributing to its widespread use was a collaboration in 2017 between NetEase Cloud Music and Hangzhou Metro that resulted in 5,000 ‘depressed hot comments’ displayed in subway carriages. This extended the public spaces in which emo emotions could be articulated ‘turning individual emotional experiences into a capital carnival for attracting traffic’ (Ji Reference Ji2021, p. 28). A range of emotional heart-wrenching comments were chosen to be compiled on posters that were placed on Hangzhou’s subway. Examples of comments included ‘Jay Chou compares love to a tornado, which I find particularly apt, because many people, like me, have never seen a tornado in their lifetime’ – a comment that had appeared on the streaming platform under Jay Chou’s ‘Tornado’ with 29,000 likes (by 20 February 2017), and ‘Ten years ago you spoke of life’s vibrant bloom like summer flowers; now, you find answers in the truth that ordinariness is the only answer’ – a comment under Pu Shu’s ‘The Road of Ordinary’ with 49,332 likes (by 20 February 2017).
Under these circumstances, content producers adapted their practices. Musician and producer Piao Ran, an artist signed to NetEase Cloud Music with over 86,000 fans on the platform, shared his perceptions and views on the unique ecosystem of NetEase Cloud Music:
NetEase Cloud Music has its own unique platform ecosystem. I feel that songs with themes related to urban love, such as breakups or unrequited love, with pleasant singing voices, and incorporating some rap elements and R&B elements, along with standard pop music elements, are indeed more likely to become popular on the NetEase Cloud Music platform. (Personal interview, 27 May 2023)
This observation illustrates how musicians and industry practitioners judge the ecology of platforms when attempting to optimise their songs. In this case, they attempted to mobilise, extend, and amplify the emotional resonances of emo across internet platforms and into public places to increase the popularity of songs.
Emo is an example of an emotional category with considerable cross-platform potential. It can easily be adapted to different platforms, allowing users to engage in comments and producers to acquire tracks and songwriters to compose songs. In NetEase Cloud Music, emo can become a sentimental comment under a song; on Weibo, it can become a topic, such as ‘#One Sentence of Emo Literature’; on Douyin emo can even become a user tag for short-form videos, ensuring that algorithms can accurately promote emo content to relevant users.
It is the cross-platform adaptability of emo that enabled it to connect various platforms and generate traffic across them. Since 2021, the musician YoungCaptain (队长), known as the ‘Emo Love Song Prince’, quickly gained popularity across various platforms. He successively released several tracks, including ‘Wherever You Are’ (哪里都是你), used in over 987,000 short videos on Douyin, ‘11’, used in nearly 2.5 million short-form videos on Douyin, and ‘To You’ (予你), used in over 138,000 short-form videos. His tracks also received over a million likes on both QQ Music and Net Ease Cloud Music and achieved popularity across multiple platforms.
The lyrics of YoungCaptain’s songs present melancholic themes associated with topics such as ex-boyfriends/girlfriends and heartbreak, deliberately optimising the content of songs so that they would resonate with emo sentiments across platforms. Simultaneously, other artists such as H3r3 emerged with a similar style to YoungCaptain and also gained popularity across platforms. An employee at a NetEase Cloud Music studio remarked:
Sometimes it’s not guaranteed that a song that becomes popular on Douyin will continue to generate traffic on the NetEase Cloud Music platform, as there are still some differences between the two platforms. However, currently those songs that are more emo or heart-wrenching tend to become more popular on any platform. This might be because the economy is not doing well, and the employment rate for young people is low. Even if they have jobs, they are often ‘workers’ (打工人) who follow the 996 schedule (working from 9am to 9pm, six days a week), and everyone may feel physically and mentally exhausted. Therefore, songs that are more emo are more likely to resonate with people. (Personal interview, 20 September 2024)
Whether songs are popular for sociological or psychological reasons referred to in this quote, or due to specific individual experiences that have caused sadness or some form of depressed mood, the emotional comments and narratives have become a major aspect of the platform ecosystem and led to particular strategies of adaptation and optimisation.
Emotion, affective states, and narratives of emotional behaviour have become increasingly important in the Chinese music industry ecosystem as a means to categorise the commodified musical experience for listeners, extending and drawing from a longer history of music classified according to mood (Tagg Reference Tagg1980). Yet, platforms do not simply categorise songs, tracks, or genres according to the conventional semiotic or representational sonic codes of musical tracks or genres (Tagg Reference Tagg1987) but extend this by constructing social narratives that form inter-subjective bridges linking listeners with each other and in turn with musicians and songs. Within the context of short-form videos, songs do not ‘express’ emotions independently of the way that people connect their own emotions and sensibilities with a particular experience of music (Kivy Reference Kivy2002). Hence, ‘platform affordances’ (Bhatia et al. Reference Bhatia, Pathak-Shelat, Sinha and Mishra2024) do not so much facilitate an ‘expression’ of the sentiments of artists or audiences but provide a repertoire of moods and ‘inter-contextual’ narratives (Negus Reference Negus2012) that may be independent of the intentions of the composers or producers.
Although short-form video apps have been criticised for reducing songs and musical composition to short clips, the processes of platform adaptation and optimisation that result in the emotional narratives I have been discussing can also facilitate a more complex relationship between musicians, songs, and users. This may articulate the complex social dynamics through which songs do not simply convey one emotion as singular texts but connect with broader inter-contextual and inter-subjective dialogues (Negus Reference Negus2012), allowing the listener an emotional journey through a range of moods and affective states, from emo to motherly love to the frivolities of trying on clothes and cosplay.
6. Concluding comments
In this article, I have employed the concept of the platform adaptor as a way of extending the discussion of how music is ‘optimised’ to ‘respond to the pressures platformisation creates’ (Morris Reference Morris2020, p. 1). In doing so, I have explored how a range of different companies, music industry workers, producers, and musicians have been adapting their practices of creation, distribution, and promotion according to the affordances of an emergent platform ecosystem shaped by short-form video apps.
I have highlighted some complex cross-platform dynamics of collaboration, competition, and potential conflict that are still being negotiated, contested, and charted as dynamics and relationships are reconfigured through the influence of multiple people, organisations, and processes. So, for example, I have referred to how TME, as a capital giant, seeks to maintain a dominant share of copyright ownership and revenues by acquiring or engaging in ventures with hot song companies; how NetEase Cloud Music promotes internal competition and uses rapid responses to social media trends to produce songs from users and social media sentiments through a system of small and flexible studios; and how Douyin, being the most prominent short-video app, occupies a prominent core position and becomes a hub through which hot songs are promoted and filtered as companies compete to achieving commercial success across multiple platforms.
As music industry workers, with producers and musicians, adapt their practices to achieve popularity for songs on short-form videos and across platforms, I have also highlighted how the opportunities for a song’s success are optimised by drawing on commenting ecology, and by constructing songs and emotional narratives in response to social trends and cyclical media rituals. In some ways, these practices build upon existing songwriting practices of composing songs for annual festivals – such as Spring Festival/New Year, university exam periods, and mothers’ day. Yet, the influence of short-form video apps adds an extra element due to the method of rapidly responding to trends on social media. As I have discussed, sentiments being expressed in comments and social media (whether about animals, anxiety, or a happy event) can almost instantly be transformed, translated, and adapted into the form of a potential hot song within hours. Here, processes of adaptation frequently take the form of transforming publicly stated sentiments on social media into songs.
Although my focus has not been on theories of creativity, this article has consequences for debates and future research about creativity within and across short-form video platforms. In certain respects, it illustrates the point made by Lin and de Kloet (Reference Lin and de Kloet2023) about the way short-form video apps afford an aesthetic of ‘repetitive creativities’ that is memetic, less about individual expression and origins and more about the self-conscious use of repetition, imitation, and sociability in forming shared connections to other users and short-form video creators.
I would add to the idea of repetitive creativities by arguing that short-form video apps, and music industry adaptations, have afforded a new type of de-creativity. The prefix ‘de’ is derived from Latin that is translated in English as ‘from’, ‘off’, or ‘away’. By using the term ‘de-creativity’, I suggest a type of recorded song production that is constantly in the process of being drawn from comments, trends, and sentiments articulated on social media whilst moving away from any clear moment of identifiable origins as it journeys between people across platforms in patterns of repetition and imitation. The de-creativity of short-form video adaptations seems to pose an ironic challenge to beliefs about copyright (the emphasis on individual creative ownership) that underlies the corporate ecosystems that afford such practices. Perhaps de-creativity is one of the paradoxes that arise as songs are produced to be popular across multiple platforms.
